Thursday, 31 July 2008

It would appear, although it still needs to be confirmed, that my tireless campaign against the ghastly Zezi Ifore (the Gormless Shoe Tree) may have borne fruit.Online reports suggest that Zezi has been relieved of live presentation of Big Brother’s Little Brother during the week, and has been relegated to ‘prerecorded segments’ from the homes of Big Brother housemates. What exactly the friends and family of the house inmates have done to deserve such punishment is unclear. Maybe it’s an additional torture inflicted in order that those on the outside share some of the suffering that housemates are experiencing in this year’s ‘Endurance’-style show.However, it seems like cause for celebration, and I intend doing a little dance of joy outside Brixton Academy once I’ve finished my cappuccino.No response as yet, though to my Freedom of Information request.Although not quite as disturbing as the sight of Zezi crammed into a Fisher-Price frock, I’m becoming a tad uncomfortable watching Liz McDonald on Corrie snogging Harry Mason from the bookies. There’s something very unsavoury about him, and not just because he was a sleazy warder in Bad Girls who was murdered and came back as a ghost.My favourite character at the moment is Blanche Hunt, who must be bribing the writers as she seems to be getting all the best lines.Blanche is currently convinced that Ken is gay and having an affair with David Platt’s gay grandad, Ted.‘As you know, Diedre,’ she said, ‘I’ve got nothing against the gays. I’d walk on hot coals for Paul O’Grady.’She’s played Blanche on and off for thirty years. She deserves some kind of an award.

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

I had an online chat with my mate Tom last night. He used to live in Chester but he’s lived in London for a year now and, lazy bugger that I am, I haven’t been arsed to meet up with him for a drink yet, which fact he reminded me of in no uncertain terms.Living in London does this to you. There always seems to be a million things to do and all the time to do it in, and before you know it time has marched past with the determined air of a fat man who can smell a Greggs shop two blocks away.So, I said, we will have to arrange a drink, but it didn’t get arranged and I’m fearful that it will be next summer before I get myself organised enough to arrange a date.I left work early today and when I got home saw that the Ugly One (bless his little e-bay socks) had done all the washing up. So i got out my paints and tried to get some of the blue out of Duilia’s face. I had to work quickly as once more the paints were congealing at a furious pace.‘Have you fixed her lips?’ the UO asked. I had neglected to lighten a section of her chin the day before which it made it look like she was having a stroke.‘Yes!’ I snapped, struggling to break through the skin of titanium white.‘Mmmmm!’ he said, with an air of Brian Sewell about him, ‘I don’t know. Mouths aren’t your thing, are they?’Everyone’s a critic.

Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Now and again I get e-mails or messages from well-meaning people trying to convert me to the path of righteousness.‘Who created you?’ they ask. ‘Who created the Earth and the Mountains?’To be honest I get very tired of explaining the theory of evolution and that mountains, although majestic and beautiful, are just the random products of geophysical movements and erosion. In fact, doesn’t that make them all the more beautiful, because they were randomly generated, rather than designed?What are people taught in schools? It concerns me greatly that there are so many people that will not venture out of their comfort zone to even entertain the possibility that they may be wrong.‘Ahh!’ these people say, ‘but then you can not admit you may be wrong.’‘You are mistaken,’ I reply. ‘I quite accept the possibility that I may be wrong. The difference between us is that I have studied the evidence on both sides, and you will not even bring yourself to read some of the evidence that may change your mind.’Absolute belief is a horrible dark thing. It traps the mind in a narrow canyon where alternative beliefs are high out of reach.All I want is for people everywhere to be able to at least question what they are taught. I have been told many times that ‘in my religion’, and this is no specific religion, ‘we are taught that we should never question, just believe.’There is something chillingly totalitarian about that, and I will respect no system that denies knowledge to its citizens.I’ve come over all serious I know, but now and again I get an ache from banging my head against a wall of ignorance.To cheer myself up, I watched ‘Days of Our Lives’. For the last couple of weeks, Philip Wet-Lettuce has been trying to get rid of a videotape made when Philip, foot-stampingly vexed with his opera-singing girlfriend Chloe, went off to spend the evening with Cynthia. Quite honestly, Cynthia and Philip deserve each other since they bring a whole new dimension to the word ‘dull’.The tape ended up (for complex reasons we needn’t dwell on) in Belle’s VCR and Belle watched horrified as Cynthia whipped off her brassiere behind a strategically placed cheeseplant before launching herself onto a topless Philip.It was only a matter of time before Chloe turned up. Belle is one of those people who blurt out secrets like bubblegum vomit, unwillingly, and in huge bubble portions.‘Please don’t watch the tape!’ she screamed, apropos of nothing, in the middle of a conversation about legwarmers.Thus, Chloe found the tape, watched it, no doubt wishing she’d had some bubblegum so she could vomit properly, before galloping off to the Dot Com cafe and slapping Philip’s bony cheeks really hard.That must have hurt. Those cheekbones look sharp.John Black’s eyebrows continue to scheme, independently of the rest of his face. No good will come of this.

Monday, 28 July 2008

I’m trying to paint a portrait of my friend Duilia, which is proving problematic. She’s looking very blue right now.With a heavy heart we muted the TV sound and turned (briefly) to Big Brother’s Little Brother to see if the Gormless Shoe Tree that is Zezi Ifore has been sacked yet. Sadly no. She popped up with her face and lip gloss pressed right into the camera, presumably just in case we hadn’t noticed she was there.Channel Four have not yet responded to my Freedom of Information request. I imagine they’ll delay it for the full twenty days, hoping that by then Zezi will have rooted in the viewers’ psyche like a permed verucha.Oh the heat! The blasted heat! My paints were drying before I could get the brush to the canvas. I’ve been catching up sporadically with ‘Days of Our Lives’ which is turning a little mystical since both Hope and Bo Brady are having strange white flashes when they look at Baby Isaac. Baby Isaac (bear with me) is Hope’s baby, but not Bo’s. It was switched at birth in the hospital by evil Stefano Dimera, and was taken home by Lexy and Abe Carver (Lexy is Stefano’s evil daughter. Abe is the oldest and stupidest policeman in the world). No one knows who the father is, since Hope was once brainwashed by a computer chip into believing she was Princess Gina (of a small European country the size of a large Asda) and while tarting about in her tiara, stealing jewels across Europe, she had more shags than a cormorant sanctuary.John Black’s eyebrows are as mobile and independent as ever and I suspect that they are planning to take over John’s new business venture ‘Basic Black’.

The British invariably complain with an inevitability bordering on the mystical, usually about the weather. Being British, I carry this sociogenetic trait with me like a moaning cross. ‘It’s too hot!’ is my current mantra. Added to that, the Ugly One insists on having fans blasting all through the house which irritates me, as I would rather put up with the ambient heat than having warm air fired at me by a machine.‘Why don’t y’all have AC?’ Americans will ask, to which I generally respond, ‘There’s no point, since we don’t need it for eighty percent of the year, and besides, it dries up my contact lenses and the British have taken on far too many American ideas already.’So, should we complain? Why do we complain?Personally, I find it quite enjoyable. There’s a masochistic side to the British psyche which allows us to bond with other sufferers. We make more friends who share some sort of target of complaint than anything else. Some time ago, I made quite a few friends from the society I set up The AC/DC (the Anti Celine Dion Campaign) which sought to ween addicts of this whining pathos-vampire away from the darkness and into the light.I am sure that many people who have moaned to each other at bus-stops about the rain/sun/fog/hail/buses/new Celine Dion album have ending up shagging like rabbits.Discuss.

Saturday, 26 July 2008

We had one of those Lou Reed perfect days today, well almost perfect. last year I bought the Ugly One a voucher to become a Keeper for a Day at London Zoo, and today was the day he booked.I took the day off so that I could go along later and watch him being mauled by vicious gibbons. Within an hour of his leaving he rang me to tell me he was lost, and I had to give him directions via a very unhelpful Google map.On my way out, someone pulled the emergency alarm on the Tube, so i was stuck at Ladbroke Grove for what seemed like half an hour but was, in all probability, just a few minutes.After that, I got lost and had to fall upon the kindness of Regents Park strangers to tell me where the zoo was.‘I’ll see you with the ring-tailed lemurs at 2’ the Ugly One texted me.I think the man at the London Zoo ticket office gave me a pitying look because I was the one person going into the zoo on my own. He did not however, reduce the entry price of £17.00. Blimey. I could buy half a meercat for that.After a seemingly fruitless search for lemurs (which the map assured me were in zone C2) I finally found them in zone D2, just in time to see the UO emerge into the cage with a proper keeper and bucket of fruit.The rest of the day went without a hitch, and the UO got to muck out some African pigs, feed the giraffes, meercats, lemurs, llamas and a grouchy looking lion, after which we had a stroll round the reptile house, said hello the gorillas, bought some souvenir mugs and came home.The screaming monster Rebecca was evicted, as I predicted, and we toasted the common sense of the British public with Chinese food and two bottles of wine.If Lou Reed’s reading this, he ought to write another song.

I’m getting a lot of readers from Reading, for reasons which are not entirely clear. I’m just hoping it’s not both of Zezi Ifore’s fans who are taking note of my (to be fair entirely justified) negative criticism and are planning my downfall.BB9 is proving to be somewhat interesting since so far all the people I wanted to go have actually gone: The ghastly and possibly mentally ill Alex; the selfish, nasty and horrible Sylvia; the travesty that was Dennis (let’s face it, he was just Shabaz with flexible legs) and hopefully this week, the spoilt and terminally sociopathic Rebecca.Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

I’m thinking of getting a digital camera. I still have my old ‘proper film’ SLR Olympus somewhere, and have just read that I will still be able to use my old SLR lenses on a new digital Olympus with the use of a handy adaptor. Hoorah!Channel 4 have acknowledged my Freedom of Information request and promise to get back to me within twenty days.In some cases, they have informed me, a fee may be payable. They can go and boil their heads. I would have thought that Freedom of Information meant Information that was Free.I enjoin you all to submit your own FOI requests which can be done very easily via the Channel 4 website. No doubt there are questions about Zezi Ifore’s recruitment which you would like to ask yourself.The more the merrier! Hoorah!

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

I cannot believe that the ghastly Zezi Ifore (known fondly to us all as The Gormless Shoe Tree) has still not been sacked, despite not turning up for the show on the Sunday before last after a drunken night out at a top night club.Apparently she was called in for a chat with the producers, but is unaccountably still on the show, despite not being able to string a sentence together even with the help of a big needle and a long piece of string.Tellingly, all the other BB presenters present a written blog on the C4 website. Zezi has only a minimal video blog which no doubt conceals her failings in the spelling and grammar department.I have now submitted a Freedom of Information request to Channel 4 to find out why she was appointed in the first place. the questions I have asked are as below:-

I would like to know:-

1. Does Zezi Ifore have any relatives working for Endemol or Channel 4

2. How many other applicants were considered for the post as co-host of Big Brother's Little Brother?

3. Whether the other applicants had broadcasting/presenting experience.

4. The name of the person who decided to give Zezi Ifore the job.

5. What are the key skills listed in the Job Description for co-host of BBLB.

I am mindful that I have not updated this blog for a while, having been busy with other things, namely a week off to do some painting, as well as a short couple of days being on strike, during which I had the chance to record my somewhat dubious views for the world, but , to be frank, couldn’t be arsed.Last Thursday was a high point when the Ugly One and I went to the O2 to see Leonard Cohen in concert.There was a time when Leonard Cohen’s music did not interest me, until a fateful day when some friends of mine forced me (it may have been at gunpoint, as in those days it might have been the only way to force me to do anything) to listen to his ‘I’m Your Man’ album. This was one of many musical epiphanies I’ve experienced over the years, and now I am far more open to listening to something outside my musical comfort zone, although I still tend to draw the line at hip-hop and popular manufactured Cowell-esque pap.Cohen is seventy-four, and far more humourous than one would have imagined for a man whose early albums tend to be associated (somewhat unfairly) with depression and suicide.‘I’ve studied all the great religious philosophies...’ Cohen announced in his trademark graveyard voice, ‘but cheerfulness kept breaking through.’Our seats were in the upper tiers, a nightmarishly steep bank of seating, and we were unfortunate enough to be sitting in front of an old Spanish man who talked loudly (in Spanish) through most of the performance. Despite this, I can honestly say that this was one of the best concerts I have seen in many years. So impressed was I, in fact, that I’ve booked two more tickets for his concert in November. We’re still in the upper tiers, but not so far back, and the O2 could not guarantee that we would be free of garrulous Spaniards.There’s been some bad news on the common sense front, since the registrar fired for refusing to marry gay couples has won her case.Speaking after the case, Miss Lillian Ladele (the bigoted individual concerned) said: "I am delighted at this decision. It is a victory for religious liberty, not just for myself but for others in a similar position to mine."Gay rights should not be used as an excuse to bully and harass people over their religious beliefs."I can understand her point. It’s not as if the Christian Church has ever bullied and harassed gay people over their sexual orientation, is it?

The Counter

Followers

THE RATIONAL PARTY MANIFESTO

1. To promote rational, logical thought in all areas of life and discourage policies, laws and decisions based on irrational beliefs.

2. To actively discourage the presentation of unproven myths as fact.

3. To actively pursue the unbiased scientific and historical investigation of such mythology.

4. To ban the Canadian songstress Celine Dion and her work from any juke-box, radio station, record-shop, pub, club or performance venue in the UK. (I suspect that some future members of the Party may have a problem with this but as the Founder Member and figurehead I feel I should have the right to have one clause in the manifesto just for me. Should we ever come to power, I intend to make it law.)

5. To actively promote scientific investigation in all areas, and scientific ethics based on logic and compassion.

6. To establish a system of morality based on a god-free philosophy, by which I mean that children should be taught respect for others and the basics of good behaviour without recourse to threats of damnation, hellfire and God’s rejection.

7. To establish an education system where religion only plays a part in that there is an ongoing debate and investigation within the curriculum into the existence of God. God’s existence will not be presented as fact, since it patently is a theory which has not been proven and for which there is only a small amount of dubious evidence.